Common knowledge.

• Author: Mankiewicz, Frank
• Position: Letter to the editor

Charlie Peters is almost always right and informative, but I think he's dead wrong on this one ("Tilting at Windmills," September). I followed government as closely as any other 20-year-old (in the Army in Germany at the time) but I was stunned by the pictures of FDR addressing Congress from a wheelchair on his return from Yalta, and so was everyone I knew, and despite the mandate of de mortuis nil nisi bonum, I must say I never looked to Betty Beale as an authority on what her countrymen thought--particularly of FDR.

FRANK MANKIEWICZ

Via email

Charles Peters responds:

I've received a number of letters like that of Frank Mankiewicz, but many more that agree with me that most people knew that Roosevelt could not walk unaided. It's hard to believe that anyone could have failed to notice throughout his long presidency that FDR was never photographed walking--or even standing--unaided, usually on the arm of an aide, or holding onto a podium or railing. And tens of thousands of photographs were taken.

While the photographers did not take pictures of FDR in his wheelchair, the print press did refer to it. On January 6, 1941, Time reported to its million readers, "The president came in five minutes before the broadcast on a small rubber-tired wheelchair." A previous issue of Time--August 6, 1940--had described how a special ramp was carried on the presidential train and attached to the president's car so that he could board. The article had also mentioned that the citizens of Hyde Park had watched him use the ramp. So had the people of Warm Springs, Georgia and, indeed, of the hundreds of places Roosevelt visited during his presidency. Thousands of people also witnessed his laborious and painful attempts to walk, including 20,000 at the Democratic National...